A Tale Of Two Cities

Charles Dickens

CONTENTS

Book the First--Recalled to Life

Chapter I The Period
Chapter II The Mail
Chapter III The Night Shadows
Chapter IV The Preparation
Chapter V The Wine-shop
Chapter VI The Shoemaker


Book the Second--the Golden Thread

Chapter I Five Years Later
Chapter II A Sight
Chapter III A Disappointment
Chapter IV Congratulatory
Chapter V The Jackal
Chapter VI Hundreds of People
Chapter VII Monseigneur in Town
Chapter VIII Monseigneur in the Country
Chapter IX The Gorgon's Head
Chapter X Two Promises
Chapter XI A Companion Picture
Chapter XII The Fellow of Delicacy
Chapter XIII The Fellow of no Delicacy
Chapter XIV The Honest Tradesman
Chapter XV Knitting
Chapter XVI Still Knitting
Chapter XVII One Night
Chapter XVIII Nine Days
Chapter XIX An Opinion
Chapter XX A Plea
Chapter XXI Echoing Footsteps
Chapter XXII The Sea Still Rises
Chapter XXIII Fire Rises
Chapter XXIV Drawn to the Loadstone Rock


Book the Third--the Track of a Storm

Chapter I In Secret
Chapter II The Grindstone
Chapter III The Shadow
Chapter IV Calm in Storm
Chapter V The Wood-sawyer
Chapter VI Triumph
Chapter VII A Knock at the Door
Chapter VIII A Hand at Cards
Chapter IX The Game Made
Chapter X The Substance of the Shadow
Chapter XI Dusk
Chapter XII Darkness
Chapter XIII Fifty-two
Chapter XIV The Knitting Done
Chapter XV The Footsteps Die Out For Ever





Book the First--Recalled to Life




I

The Period


It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct
the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present
period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its
being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree
of comparison only.

There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face,
on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and
a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both
countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State
preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were
settled for ever.

It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and
seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at
that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently
attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a
prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime
appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the
swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane
ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping
out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past
(supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs.
Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to
the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects
in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important
to the human race than any communications yet received through
any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.

France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than
her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding
smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it.
Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained
herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing
a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with
pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled
down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks
which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or
sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of
France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer
was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come
down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework
with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely
enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy